Wisconsin Recruit Travis Erstad head to Steven's Point Instead of Wisconsin

I saw this over on Western College Hockey and I am kind of surprised by this story. Erstad is a 4Th round draft choice that decided that he would play at UW-Steven's Point this season instead of for the Badgers next season.

True to form; some of the comments of this blog post are kind of entertaining as well. I always laugh at the people that accuse some of the bigger schools like UND, Minnesota and Wisconsin of over-recruiting. It is part of the college game, I personally don't like it all that much either but it is the reality. If your team doesn't recruit enough players and then there happens to be mass defections to the NHL, the coach can be caught off guard if they don't have enough recruits ready to step in. Coaches don't want to be caught unprepared and end up with a line up that isn't deep enough and lack dept. On the flip side if the mass defections do not happen you could end up with players that do not want to delay their college enrollment and pursue other options.

Erstad Opts for D-3
Wisconsin recruit Travis Erstad, a draft pick of the St. Louis Blues, has opted out of playing another year with the Lincoln Stars, and will instead play for Division III UW-Steven's Point.

Erstad is a native of Steven's Point and UWSP's head coach, Wil Nichol, coached Erstad in high school.

Critics of Wisconsin and their recruiting practices will immediately point to this as an example of Wisconsin over-recruiting and screwing over the players they've already committed to. I'm not sure I see it though.

In February of 2007 when Erstad committed, it was reported that his commitment was for either 2008 or 2009. So it's not like Wisconsin sprung the decision to have him play another year of junior hockey on him at the last minute or anything. If playing junior hockey this year was out of the question for him, he probably shouldn't have made the commitment. Yes, there was the possibility of him joining the Badgers this season, but looking at his scoring line--59 games played 9 goals 10 assists, a team worst -10--it's not like his play clearly showed that he was ready for college hockey this year.

Not that I blame Erstad for his decision. He'll be going to a nice situation in his hometown as opposed to the endless hours of travel and being away from home in Lincoln. I'm just not sure that Wisconsin should be villified for pulling the rug out from under a kid when they were just following what they had initially agreed to.